


Unnatural

by rhodrymavelyne



Series: More Than a Jinrou [5]
Category: Shiki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:06:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: Tatsumi confronts Natsuno after his visit to Toshio. After an explosive argument, Natsuno makes an unusual request.





	Unnatural

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after Wounds Like This, Part 4 of More Than a Jinrou. It's Part 5. 
> 
> I don't own Shiki, but sometimes its characters own me. :)

It was all Yuuki Natsuno could do not to put his fist in the wall, once he closed the door behind him to the ‘lair’ Tatsumi kept him in. Or shared with him. Natsuno wasn’t actually a prisoner. Not any more. 

His mouth was still coated with the taste of Toshio. Drinking the man’s blood had only made Natsuno crave it more. Only with the blood’s taste came the memories, the intimacy of Toshio’s thoughts. Those thoughts were filled with a thousand memories attached to a slender, lavender haired boy. Each memory was laced with yearning, waiting for Toshio right behind his eyes. All he had to was close them and he was back there. With him. 

“Just as I close my eyes, only to find myself with you,” Natsuno whispered. “Tohru-chan. What am I to do?” How ironic he should be talking to Tohru-chan, as Tohru-chan had once talked to Natsuno, never knowing Natsuno was nearby, listening. “What can I do for him, other than drain his life away? We failed to find another way, you and I, but I know it exists. It has to!”

“It’s unnatural.” It wasn’t Tohru-chan who answered, but Tatsumi. Sounding grave, sad, and more than a little angry. 

Natsuno turned to face the other jinrou. 

Spikes came out of shoulder pads attached to a shirt, which left very little of Tatsumi’s torso to the imagination. Leather pants hugged his legs, emphasizing every contour. 

“That’s a new outfit,” Natsuno said as tonelessly as he could. Tatsumi’s cheeks were flushed with stolen warmth. It was so easy to mistake it for human exertion, or excitement. “Who’d you have to eat to get it?”

“No one this city would miss,” Tatsumi said. His manner turned cheerful, although his eyes were hard. “A fellow who liked to go clubbing, although hunting was a better description for it. His prey was naive teenagers, whom he’d drug and procure for those who wanted young flesh. This fellow thought he’d found his biggest catch yet, when he met me.”

Abruptly, Tatsumi’s entire demeanor changed. His cat ears drooped, while his shoulders hunched. 

“Excuse me, sir, but this is my first party,” Tatsumi said, wringing his hands. He exuded shy innocence. “Could you show me around?”

“I’m guessing *you* did.” All right, Natsuno was amused, in spite of himself. Just a little bit. 

“Oh, yes, sir!” Tatsumi smiled sweetly, until his fangs popped out. He stetched out, straightening as he did, regaining his usual confident manner. “He ended being my biggest catch of the night.” His smile vanished, as if Tatsumi had no more use for it. “Although it looks like I’m not the only one who caught something.”

“It looks that way,” Natsuno retorted. He was keenly aware of his shredded pants, bearing the stains of passion, but he held his head up high. He stared right back at Tatsumi, not bothering to explain himself. 

“I got to wonder.” Tatsumi brought his hairy blue eyebrows together, making them resemble a centipede in an old fashioned video game. “Is the vampire bite always so blatantly sexual for you? Do you always have to seduce your victim?”

“I don’t know,” Natsuno said with complete honesty. “I haven’t been a vampire for that long.” He felt his lips twisting into a smirk. “Maybe my victims are just special.”

“Immortality is making you a slut,” Tatsumi said. His blue eyes darkened to an angry purple. “I guess I expected better of you.”

“Why?” Natsuno asked. Somehow, his smirk was slipping away at the genuine hurt buried within Tatsumi’s anger. He shouldn’t care. This bastard destroyed Tohru-chan. He nearly destroyed Akira, Kaori, and Toshio as well. He’d destroy Natsuno, too, if Natsuno let him. Again. “Why should you give a crap, if I fuck my food?”

The blow to the side of his face came so fast, Natsuno didn’t see it, or feel it connect. He just reeled from the blow, as his cheek started stinging. 

“You know, when I first saw you, I pitied you,” Tatsumi said. “I watched you, long before you started becoming a threat to Sunako.” He stared down at his fist, as if wondering how it came to be attached to his arm. “I was curious about the boy, who’d turned Megumi-kun into an obsessive lunatic, so I followed you. I watched you walk to school one morning. A car pulled up next to you, driven by your Tohru-chan and his Ritsu-chan.”

Tatsumi emphasized the word “his”, crossing his arms.

“I noticed how he smiled at you. Such a friendly, careless smile.” Tatsumi’s eyes glittered with malice. “I also noticed how you stiffened up, tried not to respond to the smile. You see, I’ve met boys like your Tohru-chan. I got to know a couple of them only too well, before I was turned into a jinrou.” Tatsumi’s voice quivered with a truth, a pain Natsuno could feel floating between them. He could breathe that honesty in, if he dared. “Attractive, cheerful, charming the pants off everything around them, female or male. Leaving those who gave into those charms pantless, with nothing, but a happy, go lucky smile, or a slap on the back. Walking away with a wave, never realizing how many hearts they’ve shattered.”

“No.” Natsuno balled his hands into fists to keep them from trembling. “Tohru-chan wasn’t like that. He never hid the fact that he fancied Ritsu-san. He was my friend, nothing more. He was my friend, when no one else was.”

Why did every word feel awkward and untrue? Tohru-chan might have felt that way, but Natsuno didn’t. Every casual touch Tohru bestowed upon him made Natsuno ache, although he’d fought with all his might to conceal it. 

“Let me tell you how things would have played out with your ‘friend’, Natsuno.” Tatsumi kept his voice was reasonable, but raw pain swam within each word. “One night, when you were spending the night with him, Tohru would have started touching you. You’d resist, but after wanting him for so badly, for so long? Everything you’d been trying to deny would have been let loose. You’d go wild in his arms, giving him your body, your heart, and soul.”

Natsuno dug his nails into his palms within his fists. What point was there in arguing with any of this? Or denying it? 

He might well have gone wild, if Tohru-chan had touched him. He’d almost kicked his friend in a panic when he tried pounce tackle him. 

Natsuno couldn’t have let a hint of his true feelings escape. Not after his confession about wanting to take Ritsu-san on a drive. 

“The next day, he’d laugh about the whole thing, dismiss it as just a bit of fun, and tell you about his upcoming date with Rits-chan.” Tatsumi looked away into the distance, away from Natsuno. “Never realizing he’s breaking your heart in two as he did.”

“No,” Natsuno whispered. Too clearly did he remember Tohru-chan telling him he wanted to ask Ritsuka-san out. 

She was a lot older than Tohru-chan, but Natsuno was younger. Not to mention he and Tohru-chan were out in the country and they were both male. Nothing would ever happen with Tohru-chan in Sotoba. Even if a secret part of Natsuno wished it would. 

This was just one more reason Natsuno had wanted to get out of Sotoba and return to a big city. To leave Tohru-chan free to pursue Ritsuka-san and to put some distance between Tohru-chan and Natsuno’s feelings for him. 

“You’re doing it again,” Natsuno hissed. “Making assumptions about people, when you don’t know what they would have done. Just because Tohru-chan reminds you of someone who did that doesn’t mean he would! You have no right to judge him like that!”

“No right? Why? Because we killed him?” Tatsumi cocked his head in Natsuno’s direction. “Or because you did?” Tatsumi’s eyes lost some of their redness. “We may have killed him the first time, but you killed him the second.”

“And whose fault was that?” Natsuno snarled. “You never gave Tohru-chan a chance to prove he was better than you expected!”

“We gave him every chance. So did you.” Tatsumi’s manner was much calmer, but he continued relentlessly. “Mutou Tohru waffled between shiki and human, committing to neither. Just as he waffled between you and Rits-chan.”

“He was young! A teenager in a village, turned into a vampire against his will!” Natsuno cried. “He was still growing up, finding out what he wanted, until you took his options away from him!”

“What about your options, Natsuno?” Tatsumi asked. His eyes hardened, once more. “Tell me, if you loved your Tohru-chan so much, why did you team up with Ozaki-sensei to kill all the shiki in the village, including Tohru-chan?”

“You turned him. You and Shimizu,” Natsuno said, forcing the words out. Right behind his eyes, the memory of Tohru-chan dead, staked, waited for him. The bloody consequences of his plan would haunt him forever. “The legends say if you stake a vampire, those he turned revert back to being mortal.”

“Meaning if you killed us, Tohru-chan would return to being mortal?” Tatsumi’s eyes widened with a boyish surprise, which was almost cute. “Natsuno, that’s just a legend.”

“A lot of the legends turned out to be true,” Natsuno retorted. “Why not that one?” He almost choked on the raw pain, which accompanied each word. Of course the legend he’d most wanted to be true had failed.

Perhaps because he’d failed to kill Tatsumi.  
“Well, that’s one more thing you can blame on me.” Tatsumi ran a hand through his ears. “Whatever gets you through the nights.”

“Tatsumi.” 

Tatsumi turned to stare at him, blue eyes widening with an almost childlike surprise. 

It was the first time Natsuno had ever called Tatsumi by his name. He bit his lower lip, tried to keep it from trembling. “I need to speak to Muroi-sensei. Could you arrange it?”

“Natsuno, what are you playing at?” Tatsumi frowned, looking him up and down. “I’m guessing this isn’t your request.”

“No. Toshio never even brought the subject up.” Natsuno lifted a hand to gaze at it in the light. Not a trace of blood was left on his fingers or nails. 

Toshio had left a mark, even if it wasn’t visible on his hands. He felt it writhing through his loins, aching in his chest, crying out its need. 

“He has a chance to make things right with his Seishin,” Natsuno murmured. “So much has gone wrong, tragically wrong for all of us.” He looked into Tatsumi’s eyes. “Please. Give them that chance, my Toshio and your Seishin.” 

“This is the first time you’ve ever pleaded with me. What must it have cost you?” Tatsumi closed his eyes. “All right. I believe Muroi-sensei is with Sunako. I’ll go to her, see if he is. If so, I’ll ask him.”

“Thank you.” It was Natsuno’s turn to close his eyes. 

“First you use my name, then you plead with me, and now you thank me.” Tatsumi smiled and opened his eyes. The purple rage had simmered down into something sober and sad. “Your victim means a great deal to you.”

Natsuno didn’t answer.


End file.
